Dystopian Legions Announcement Coming Sometime in January

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In case you guys didn't know, Spartan Games will be announcing some stuff Dystopian Legions related this month, the most immediate thing being price reductions, as well as some stuff to due with the Russians and the CoA.

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I sincerely hope this portends great things... But in the past they've cried wolf so many times I'm going to be skeptical until it arrives.

Even if Spartan is able to make an announcement it may be a folly to get to excited. Spartan has made so many announcements and promises in regards to DL over the years that I can't believe them until they actually come through.

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What do you feel is the biggest barrier to entry in DL, or as is often the case, couple put in order.

Although I will ask to leave out one thing, players/opponents. Clearly lack of opponents is a huge issue for any table top game, especially the smaller systems. So we'll go with the assumption that if the other barriers to entry are addressed new players will come and fix that problem. In short, it is not a problem so much as a symptom of other problems.

Is it competition for the type of game, aesthetics, price, lack of army choice, lack of choice within existing armies, gameplay, readability and understanding the rules, etc.?

And why that fits here is because what everyone thinks is the biggest issues will go a long ways to saying how much of a difference any announcements will make (with the big caveat of them having to follow through with them). If they are addressing issues that aren't really keeping people from playing, it doesn't actually do too much to grow the game.

For things like price, would it be price per unit, per model, to get started in the game, or get started with a new army. For example, even if price per model is great, if the total cost to get a playable force is high then that is still an issue.

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What do you feel is the biggest barrier to entry in DL, or as is often the case, couple put in order.

Although I will ask to leave out one thing, players/opponents. Clearly lack of opponents is a huge issue for any table top game, especially the smaller systems. So we'll go with the assumption that if the other barriers to entry are addressed new players will come and fix that problem. In short, it is not a problem so much as a symptom of other problems.

Is it competition for the type of game, aesthetics, price, lack of army choice, lack of choice within existing armies, gameplay, readability and understanding the rules, etc.?

And why that fits here is because what everyone thinks is the biggest issues will go a long ways to saying how much of a difference any announcements will make (with the big caveat of them having to follow through with them). If they are addressing issues that aren't really keeping people from playing, it doesn't actually do too much to grow the game.

For things like price, would it be price per unit, per model, to get started in the game, or get started with a new army. For example, even if price per model is great, if the total cost to get a playable force is high then that is still an issue.

I think the biggest barrier for entry was the fact the game hasn't gotten any major updates since 2014, and two of the main forces still have fairly incomplete armies, which makes people dismiss the game as no longer being supported.

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There have been many things and they have changed a bit through the life of the game.

The cost to entry is a significant reason the game never took off. If a person finds issues with the aesthetics or gameplay its much easier to get them to buy in at least for some games if the cost to play is low. Right now the cost of entry was roughly similar to 40k so it took a lot to convince people to invest in the game when they could just play the games they already did.

This may be partially addressed with a new structure to buy the models. If you can only buy what is needed then you won't be forced to do stuff like buy the $80 Infantry Expansion Box if all you're going to use is two medium weapon specialists.

Then a big problem is what Ciciro said. A lack of focus on the game meant everyone forgot about it. People bought into DL2.0 wanting CoA and RoF but then over two years later they are still barely usable. This is one of the reasons I have no confidence in the upcoming "Announcement". They announced that RoF, CoA, and RC were coming in 2012. They announced they were coming in 2014. We have only 2 line infantry sections for the CoA and RoF and no RC in 2017. Announcements are useless unless they will actually follow through on their promises.

Similar to my first point I don't think that DL2.0 really has defining gameplay mechanics that are strong and appealing to other gamers to draw them from their current games. In DL1.0 I always talked up the command and control mechanics and how central the chain of command was to the game. DL2.0 stripped that of its importance and didn't really give anything in return.

In the beginning, in 2012-2013 I was able to get lots of peoples attention and there seemed to be a lot of people with budding interest but the time required to get variety in the forces was very hard on my friends patience. Also early in the games lifecycle there were very vocal detractors on the internet and their hatred of the game largely centered around the models being 4-5 mm taller than the models in other games. That doesn't affect most places but in North Texas everyone I met in game stores paid attention to the online communities. Not necessarily forums but the news sites.

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I have a friend who I haven't seen in a couple of years. He promised that he'd by a Russian army when they would come out to play with me. But of course he's completely stopped gaming and I'm even 99% sure I'm never going to play a game of DL again unless it's to test out skirmish rules against myself.

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I feel like cost is less of an issue now, as it is pretty easy to get a lot of models from eBay. I just got a EoBS starter set and transport for about $45. Of course the fact that you can buy basically buy most models, new, for half off on eBay due to the inability of a number of hobby stores to shift the product (leading to it now only being sold on the SG store) means that you have little reason to buy from SG themselves unless they release new models.

I had emailed Spartan Neil last week about what some of the plans are, and he said the things being announced are

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My DL has been mothballed for a very long time due to a lack of players/interest and not all of that is the games fault...........certainly some were the continued failed promises and the long typo corrections to the orbats and........................................the silence. Hopefully someday this may change.

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However, I'll believe it when I hold it in my hand, at this point I'm more about completing my CoA for collecting purposes, what little player base has existed has dwindled when the French and Russians didn't appear. Then again, if the Russians start to make an appearance there might actually be some new interest.

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I don't think that DL2.0 really has defining gameplay mechanics that are strong and appealing to other gamers to draw them from their current games. In DL1.0 I always talked up the command and control mechanics and how central the chain of command was to the game. DL2.0 stripped that of its importance and didn't really give anything in return.

This. As many have already said the lack of direction for the game showed in the release schedule,and more importantly in the rules. I had many players around when it first came out, but they all faded away. The minis were beautiful, and the price point not really so different from any other company in the main, but the lack of a defining rules set really showed.

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Well it is officially February in the UK and I still haven't seen anything about the pricing. It didn't seem that the other announcements were necessarily supposed to be January but just stuff that Neil likes talking about.

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As usual - no news. I was so hyped when i first found about DL, bought my first two squads of FSA., was searching through the internet to find all scraps of information about Dystopian World and it's fluff. Since then almost 3 years has passed and pretty much nothing happened with the game. Well, to be fair COA minis were released but it doesn't change the fact that the game itself is completely stagnant.

Come on Spartan, it shouldn't be so hard to release a one hero or one squad / vehicle per month. Hell, i bet everyone would be happy if you threw in a book or some other thing related to the fluff.

As it is now, i still have my two FSA squads (incomplete line infantry squad and sniper section) and i don't intend to buy anything more. I was thinking about buying Iron Scorpion but it's pretty expensive and it's impossible to expand upon RoF as there are no new minis for them.

Hope one day Spartan will become reliable enough to keep their word one they promise news for DL.